How Do You Feel About Relationship Status on Facebook?

By living part of our social lives on the Internet, we've come to have to do things online as well as in real life. If you make a new friend, the world knows you're now buddies because you'll add them on Facebook, too.

But it's not always harmless alerts about friendships — sometimes you have the unhappy duty of reporting that you're no longer in a relationship. Even when it's someone else, it's awful signing into Facebook and seeing that one of your friends went from being "in a relationship" to "single."

To hear an argument for not displaying relationship status, read more.

And it's not just celebrities for whom the invasion of privacy is awkward; people comment on the change for all friends to see, inboxes are filled with "what happened?" messages. If you've chosen to display your status when you're in a relationship, you pretty much have to change it to single. For this reason, I wonder if it's better to not share that information at all. (Especially if you're in the "it's complicated" bracket and have a tendency to change to back and forth from single to in a relationship and back again — just keeping up with those is exhausting!).

Your close friends that you have interactions with beyond Facebook will know about your personal life, and there won't be any uncomfortable messages from people you rarely speak to asking if you're OK. It may seem extreme, but keeping mum could be best for everyone.

when i joined facebook i was already in a relationship so when he joined too i had the in a relationship with bit, but then we broke up and i got all the what happened messages, which i only bothered to explain to anyway that actually asked me over the phone or in person, but i suppose the advantage was that via my cousins my grandparents knew and didn't ask me about it.
but i've sent it to not show anything now so even if i find myself in another relationship i'm not going to have it say anything.
also can i point out that not only does the status chance to single when you removed the in a relationship bit but it seems to also put the looking for to dating! like i wanted to start dating the minute i was single!

I have myself listed as single but now I am just going to take that out. I want to keep my love life personal. There are just certain people I don't care to share intimate details with. I am dating somebody - but I just don't care to announce it since I don't want to discuss it. This gives me a good reason to go in and make some changes.

I find this SO disturbing (and I have a dating blog where I divulge all kinds of details about my dating/sex/relationship life). People are making way too many things public and in inappropriate ways. And worse, people are now communicating how they feel about the people they are dating via social media (I really care about you and so I changed my status or I don't care as much as I used to so I changed my status). Can't we all just be grown ups again and speak to one another?

Honestly- I had dated someone for 4 years and I felt like it was the easiest way to just let everyone know so that I didn't have to tell someone every time they asked how he was doing. It was just easier that way.

I used to use the status, but everyone would bother me constantly--'Why don't you have a boyfriend?', etc., so I just don't put anything anymore. Can't bother me if you're not sure I'm dating or not, can you? And it's always the people who you haven't spoken to in a while, never the people who see you all the time.

I just don't put it on there. I wouldn't want everybody in my networks [not at my school, not in my city, not on my JOB] to know my business. Unless I was engaged/married [lets everyone know that I am NOT available], it doesn't make any sense.
When couples break up, it's awkward for people that know both parties. One girl recently went through that, and got her brother to help her hide the status update that said she and her ex had broken up. It worked - I didn't know until she told me, and she was happy that I found out that way b/c she didn't want random people in her business.

When I was with my ex, I had my relationship status posted on Facebook. Of course we broke up and it seemed like the minute that I changed the relationship status, I had messages from people that I hadn't talked to in a while asking me why. I never told them why (if you*re not in my life on a daily basis, then why would I tell you??). Now that I'm with my current boyfriend, I just changed the relationship status to blank.